Lately, every time we’ve had a roast chicken dinner, we’ve made stock from the carcass, skin and giblets (except the liver, which I’ve fried as a snack). And the next evening we’ve enjoyed a tasty risotto made with some of the stock and leftover roast chicken.

But last time we had roast chicken, we’d had a pancetta and parmesan risotto (made with home-made stock out of the freezer) the night before.

So we fancied trying something different to use up the roast chicken leftovers.

We started flicking through our cookery books for inspiration. The first one I picked up was a book I’d not even read yet – Hugh Fearnley-Whittingstall’s The River Cottage Meat Book, which I bought only recently.

In the chapter on dealing with leftovers, after the many pages on making home-made stock, I found the suggestion of chicken croquettes. It’s not a detailed recipe; it simply advises to “Chop the chicken fairly small and mix with a roughly equal quantity of course fresh breadcrumbs. Mix in enough beaten egg to get a sticky but spoonable mixture and season well. Shallow fry spoonfuls in hot oil, turning occasionally, until golden and crisp.”

Bingo! Just what we fancied. And we had some ageing bread to make into breadcrumbs too!

Leftover Roast Chicken Croquettes

Prep Time5minutes

Cook Time5minutes

Total Time10minutes

Ingredients

eggsto bind

seasoning

vegetable oilfor frying

Roughly equal quantities:

leftover roast chicken

breadcrumbs

Instructions

We used our Magimix to blitz slightly stale white bread into breadcrumbs and to chop unevenly sized chunks of leftover chicken into tiny, evenly-sized pieces (just a brief blitz will do, you don't want to make puréed chicken meat!)

Combine the chicken and breadcrumbs and then mix in enough beaten egg to bring the mixture together without it getting too sticky to handle.

Form the mixture into balls and flatten slightly into patties.

Fry gently in about half a centimetre of cooking oil until brown on the bottom skin. Turn over to brown the other side. Don't let the oil get too hot or the outsides will burn before the insides heat through.